Oxygen Fitness Penang
Floor 6, Lot L6-21 Gurney Paragon, Persiaran Gurney, 10250 George Town
Opening Hours: Mon – Fri: 6:30 – 23:00, Sat and Sun: 9:00 – 21:00
Cost: RM 35 per day or RM 159 per month (price quoted in club)
Or check out Fave for a reduced rate of RM 99 for one month!
Or get a free pass here, currently valid on weekends.
Location and Entry
Oxygen Fitness Penang is located on the sixth floor of the popular Gurney Paragon mall. For those who have already been to Peak Fitness in Gurney Plaza, this mall is next door. So, it’s worth dedicating some time to this area for shopping, workouts, coffees and food courts! If you want to get straight down to some hard work, go through the main entrance to the mall, head straight to the lift which is on your left. After exiting the lift on floor six, walk towards the front of the building again to see Oxygen Fitness in front of you.
Staff kindly greeted me with a free energy drink after I told them I had registered for a free trial. Cheers guys! Although towels are available from reception, I wasn’t given one so I’m not sure if they are chargeable or free for members.
Facilities
This large gym has it all – a spacious functional training area, free weights, resistance, Hoist and Hammer Strength machines along with some cardio equipment. And a first for me in Penang – a climbing wall with a lot of crash mats! And that’s just downstairs – head on up a floor and you’ll see three studios too. These are for Spinning, Yoga and a large main studio. That’s addition to another floor-space area in middle of these.
Go up another floor and you’ll find the changing rooms, which include hairdryers and ample lockers – take your own padlock.
Free water is provided as you’d expect, and the shower I had was good. I found the changing rooms here very clean and attractive, with numerous showers.
As Oxygen Fitness is located in a top mall, I was expecting everything to look brand new and in pristine condition. I wasn’t disappointed as such, but some areas are less modern than others and the club is overall not as well air-conditioned as it could be, studios aside. (I didn’t do any classes so I’m not sure of the temperature inside these.)
Book Top-Selling Tours with Get Your Guide – Beat the Queues!
Weights
The weight-training equipment here is extensive and definitely one of the gym’s best areas. You’ll find a spacious free weights area with a large cable crossover station, next to the floor-to-ceiling windows. Enjoy views of the city as you train if you wish! Each end has three cable stations attached for pull-downs and rows, and you’ll find pull-up bars in the centre. I also found five bench press stations here with two each of flat and inclined, and one declined bench. There’s a narrow cable-crossover station with further pull-up bars too. You’ll find hip extension benches by the rig.
For your legs you’ll find two Smith machines. Squat racks are encompassed in the rig in the functional training area and there’s several of them.
Freeweights
I found two full sets of dumbbells up to 45kg here – given how busy the gym was on a Saturday lunchtime, I can see why this investment was a good idea! You’ll also find two full sets of barbells from 10 – 45kg, one straight and one curled.
Resistance Equipment
You’ll find an impressive range and number of resistance machines here, namely a mixture of Hammer Strength, Hoist and regular pin-operated resistance machines.
Hammer Strength plate-loadable equipment includes a chest press, incline press and two leg presses. Plate-loadable Hoist equipment includes a chest press, standing calf raise, preacher curl, mid-row, shoulder press and lat pull-down. You’ll find further pin-loadable Hoist equipment for the upper and lower body.
Last but not least, you’ll find a separate area dedicated to “normal” resistance equipment. There’s a good range and number of machines here for both the upper and lower body. Several abs benches and a hanging leg-raise machine are lurking around here too.
A preacher-curl station randomly resides near the climbing wall, along with some seemingly leftover cardio equipment.
All in all, I found the Oxygen Fitness Penang to be very well equipped with weights, and equipment was fairly modern and in good condition. The Hoist and Hammer Strength equipment seemed to be all crammed in to a fairly small area though, so machines here are very close together but easily workable.
Cardio
In the main cardio area, I found six treadmills, six upright bikes, three recumbent bikes, four arc trainers and four rowers.
Elsewhere around the gym I found a further 13 treadmills and two arc trainers.
If I had to name a weaker section to this gym, it would be the cardio area, which felt cluttered. Bikes and arc trainers seemed to be laid out too close for comfort and apart from the treadmills, little space was allocated for cardio equipment. Additionally I didn’t recognise the manufacturer of the equipment, so I’m not sure how it fares. I’m used to most top gyms having either TechnoGym or LifeFitness, not that I’m against other brands. In any case it appeared fairly modern and was working.
You’ll find a small cardio area near the climbing wall too, namely a stair-climber and a couple of ellipticals.
Functional Training and… Climbing!
Moving over to the functional training area, we are back in business! You’ve got several options here; firstly, you will find a medium-sized fully-matted area here (no shoes allowed) to do floor work. Above half of it stands a large climbing wall, and numerous crash mats are propped up against the wall for you to arrange accordingly. Be careful if you have never climbed before! No-one was climbing when I was there, but if you are innocently stretching off in this area, beware of people landing on you!
Further around, the matted area continues without a climbing wall, which might be safer bet for floorwork. However, there are around four heavy punchbags hanging here and one standing, if you want to do some boxing.
You’ll also find some Swiss balls here and a wing-chun station.
Gym Toys
In a separate area on the same floor, you’ll find a large rig and numerous gym toys. The rig encompasses pull-up bars, squat racks, TRX work and rings.
Gym toys include power bags, BOSUs, step-boards, ViPRs, power balls and resistance loops. Much of this appears to have no order to it, but is rather just randomly arranged on the floor.
The medicine balls and kettle-bells are more tidily arranged on shelves though, and go up to 8kg and a generous 28kg respectively.
You’ll also find mats and plyoboxes here too.
Upstairs
If you don’t fancy either of these areas(!), you even have a third option upstairs. You’ll find a central area up here with a wooden floor, which has no obvious use, apart from the five Spinning bikes which overlook the main gym. There are benches around the sides where you can wait to do a class, or watch classes going on in any of the three studios, but the spacious area itself wasn’t in use at all when I trained. I didn’t see much in the way of gym toys here but there’s nothing to stop you bringing them up if you like the space!
Studios and Classes
I found three attractive-looking studios upstairs, namely Spinning, Yoga and a large group exercise studio.
The timetable is published weekly in the club and on the group Facebook page. See current timetables here, along with my studio pics:
Currently, Oxygen Fitness hosts around 32 classes a week in the group exercise studio, 10 Spinning classes and 14 Yoga classes. The group exercises classes include BodyCombat, BodyPump, BodyStep, BodyBalance, Grit, Zumba, Sh’Bam, Tabata, Belly Dancing, Circuits and Salsation.
The Yoga studio runs a mixture of Hatha Yoga, Power Yoga, Restorative Yoga and Pilates classes.
Summary
This large gym is very well-equipped and caters well for all training, especially weight training. I found the club to be very busy, probably due to its location in a large mall. The facilities here are not as new or aesthetically appealing as a couple of the other gyms I’ve been to and I’d be reluctant to come here in peak periods due to the number of people. Free weights were not racked in order/tidily, although I have seen worse! The club was also little warmer than others. However the studios looked awesome and the class timetables are pretty comprehensive, so if you enjoy classes you’re spoilt for choice here!
If this location is good for you, it’s well worth checking this place out.
Want an Overview of all Gyms in Penang?
I went to eight different gyms here and I’ve summarised, compared and recommended my favourites for each budget level. Check out Gyms in Penang.
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